


Cold is the Winter, Colder now are You

by PansexualAlienMothership



Category: The Vampire Armand - Fandom, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: F/M, Original Character(s), Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-08 03:04:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1924353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PansexualAlienMothership/pseuds/PansexualAlienMothership
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armand meets an old friend, but finds that more time has passed than he ever could have expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold is the Winter, Colder now are You

         I waited at the window of the room, on the balcony. I was debating whether or not to even disturb the woman that I knew lay in bed. I heard the lightest of footsteps. They were such that untrained, human ears couldn't hear them. I looked up. "Louis," I murmured, averting my honey eyes. "Amadeo," he said. "Nay, Armand," I corrected, as I often did. I no longer liked the sound of Amadeo. It didn't fit me. "You're not going to see her? After coming all this way, in the chill of the winter?" he asked, as if the acid in my correction hadn't existed. "I shouldn't," I mused, shaking my head. I played with a loose red curl. "She'll be different, Louis. It's been too long, I promise I'd return and I-… I forgot," I admitted. "If she loves you as much as you told me she did once, then she'll forgive you." He was right, I thought. She'll have to forgive me, because she was completely in love with me. And I wouldn't have denied it if someone had stated that I was in love with her as well. "Leave me be, Louis. One monster in her presence is far too many."  Louis gave a singular nod. "Amadeo?" he asked. My attention was caught, from anger at the misused name, but I didn't bother correcting him. "Hm?" I simply hummed, so that he wouldn't recognize the anger in my voice and thus challenge it further. "Do not do anything stupid. Remember. She's not sixteen anymore."  That was something I had to remember, yes… I turned to tell him that I would not, but he was gone. And I was alone, forced to face a past that I had tried without avail to abandon in fear. 

        The door creaked open. "Do you not need to be invited in, angel?" a frail, but recognizable voice echoed. "Or should I call you a devil with an angel's face? Either way, do come in quickly, and close the damn door."   
"Good afternoon, Sarai," I answered plainly, ignoring her perpetuation of the old myth. I looked around the elaborate room. She'd married into money, I could tell that much. An oriental rug laid in front of a pink marble fireplace, burning hotly. It still didn't keep out the winter chill. My gaze flitted to the bed. A canopy, with cherry wood pillars and a netting of blood red silk. Red. Sarai's favorite color. It always had been. Now it wasn't the winter, but  the memories that sent chills down my immortal spine. I pulled back the curtain gently. She sat up in the bed, wearing a red velvety nightgown. Her hair was still blacker than night, with only a hint of grey near the roots. She didn't look her age of eighty-eight. She looked at me with intelligent blue eyes, but said not a word. I placed a cold hand over hers and she studied it for a moment. "You don't tend to break promises, even if it takes seventy-two years to fulfill them, yes?" she sniffed, looking away from me. My brow furrowed, and I fingered with some jewelry at the bedside. "I don't," I mumbled sharply. "Do not be rude, git. You may be five hundred, but you are still as much of a child as you were when you were turned," she snapped, the authority in her voice making me straighten my back. She was right, I thought. I was still very much a child… "I apologize."  
  "As you should," she breathed. "And why have you come now?"  The statement caught me. Why had I chosen now to come, when she had been in my mind for so long, pushed to the far corners where I could race away from my terror of commitment? I sighed. I'd been doing much of that this day. "Because, as you said, I don't break promises easily," I tried. She nodded once. I took a deep breath. "I'm here to make an apology for-" "For forgetting about me?" she interrupted. I went rigid, swallowing. There was nothing to swallow though. My mouth was as dry as a blood-drained corpse. "I… I d-didn't forget," I muttered. "Stuttering is your tell, Armand. You are not a good liar, my angel. God made it difficult for you to sin."  
 "And yet here I am, a damned devil!" I shouted. She didn't even flinch as I seethed. "Not a devil. Simply an immortal who doesn't understand what to do with an eternal life," she mused, looking out the window. "Ah, angel, look. It's snowing… I love the snow, so white and pure," she whispered, lifting her head. I could read her eyes. They said,  _"I'm not simply speaking about the snow."_    
I sighed a bit. I was as far from pure as tarnished silver. "Life has treated you well, Sarai," I idled, trying to learn what I could of her.   
"It has," she admitted, nodding slowly. She looked around the room. "All the food and wine and company of servants that I could have."  She seemed lost in thought. "You had no children then?" I whispered. Sarai had always wanted children. "Oh, I had children," she sighed, waving her hand. "A boy and a girl. Armand and Chloe…" she spoke softly. _She'd named a child after me?_   _What a_   _cursed child he must've be en…_ I thought as I nodded absently. "But they forget about their mother once they're grown and gone and have families of their own. I matter no longer to them. I matter no longer to anyone," she sighed, laying back. "I'm simply an old burden."  
"Sarai," I scolded, "You know that's not true…"  "It is, Armand, and you know it. You just choose not to feel that way because you're feeling a guilt that you're not used to feeling. You feel guilt when you feed and guilt when you kill, but you've never felt guilt because you've left someone, have you?" she sighed, her blue eyes closing. I sat beside her, silently.  
  
            "Armand! Armand, come on!" I laughed as the girl led me through the cemetery gates. She held my hand in her own soft one. With my other hand, I held a large and heavy picnic basket. She put her finger to her lips as the gravedigger walked by. Once she was sure the ragged old man was out of sight, she led me across a memorial courtyard and out another gate. We'd been meeting now for months, and become close friends. The girl's name was Sarai Bardin. In the small field, from a tree, there hung paper lanterns that looked to be inspired by the orient. They were lit with tea candles and provided an ethereal glow. The fireflies danced like fairies, lighting the night sky as if striving to be the stars they could not yet reach. Sarai unfolded the old tablecloth, smiling as me. She had long, dark curls and blue eyes. Her skin was milky white and she was pleasantly plump, which I found made her all the prettier. She sat down as I opened the basket, pulling out some grapes, a bit of cheese, and some wine. "Hardly a picnic," I said with a snort. She punched my shoulder. For such a lovely young thing, she was strong. She laid back on my lap while I combed my slender fingers through her hair. She stopped me for a moment, then brushed the hair away from her neck. It was an invitation to kiss her, a communication that we'd developed when silence was necessary. I took her offer, kissing hungrily at her skin, leaving marks on it that she would powder in the morning before church. She pulled down the shoulder of her dress. "Sarai, I don't think w-" "I'm leaving Monday," she said abruptly. I blinked. "Leaving…? I'm afraid I don't understand…."  
"I'm… Being send to boarding school. And… I won't be coming back for a very long time, angel," she whispered, touching my face. I looked down. She was leaving…? My dearest and closest friend in this little town I was passing through would be gone. That would hardly give me reason to keep loitering here. I took a deep breath, about to discuss what this would mean for her before she interrupted me with a proposition that made me halt mentally and physically. "I want to be your fledgling. I want you to turn me," she pleaded. The world seemed to be standing still in those moments that I looked at her with molten chocolate eyes and she stared at me with her own in a shade of glacial blue. "Sarai, I cannot…" I denied her request, shaking my head in a firm manner. "But you can! Make me like you!" she pleaded, grasping the lapels of my green satin vest. "Sarai…" I whimpered. "I want to live forever and be with you! We can own the night and have an eternal love, like those in the storybooks! Please, Armand," she begged, tears streaking that sweet, heart-shaped face. "Tomorrow evening. Before you leave," I said, nodding. "I promise, I will see you again…" Her lips upturned in a gracious smile and she threw her arms around me. "Thank you angel!" she squealed. After our picnic, she gave me a red silken handkerchief, as a reminder of the following night. 

Our following night did not come. I procured a way out of the town early the next morning. I never saw Sarai again, not for seventy-two years.    
  


"Thinking again Armand? That's such a bad habit," Sarai spoke, interrupting my thoughts. I quickly wiped my cheek, a habit from humanity. As if there would've been tears falling down my face... She looked as pale as me now. The fire was dying. I went toward a wrought iron wood holder, planning to add more kindling to the dwindling flame. "Don't bother," Sarai croaked. "My time here grows short."  
"Sarai… You're not dying," I assured. "You're simply cold."  
  "This is where you're wrong, angel," she murmured, a sad smile coming across her gaunt face. My lip quivered. "Sarai… Sarai, no, I just got here, you cannot die. I won't allow it!" I cried, shaking my head. "Calm yourself angel, I'm an old woman. Old women die. It's a fact of life. It's one I believe you're familiar with…"  
"No…" I sobbed, rubbing at the bitter tears. "You're leaving me!" I sniffed childishly. "As you left me, angel," she murmured, closing her eyes. "No, no, let me turn you. Let me save you… Let me repent, please, God!" I begged. The tables had turned.  She laughed, but it sounded hollow and sad. "Where was this attitude when I was young and beautiful? Where were you when I prayed every night for my angel to return? You had a chance to change me. You had many chances to return to me… And you had a choice. You chose not to," she said as I wept against her frail, veiny hand. She cupped my face gently, kissing my forehead with soft lips. "Stop that ridiculous wailing, child. You look absurd without tears to cry…" she sighed, rubbing at my cheeks with her thumbs. "It's been seventy-two years, Armand," she sighed, and I could tell she'd already begun fading away. "And I have hardly forgiven you…."  
  
  I had turned away by then. I was about to turn around and yell at her, until I noticed her chest was no longer rising and falling in the rhythm of life. I clutched my chest, feeling as if my own heart had been pried out of my chest by Death himself. I wailed like an infant, shaking my head. The fire had died, along with Sarai, leaving the room as cold as an ice box. As cold as my skin. I hadn't wept like this in a very long time. And no matter how hard I wailed, nothing came from my eyes. I wanted to plead for tears, to beg that they would fall from my eyes, but I knew that was an impossibility. I stood slowly, shakily. I placed a cold kiss on Sarai's head. "You made a fool out of Louis," I told her quietly. "He said you would forgive me…"  
I touched her hand. "But your heart is as cold as your skin… And they're as cold as the winter," I whispered, pulling her silken curtains of her large canopy bed closed. I opened the balcony door again, stepping out. I stared for a moment at the snow. Soft and white and pure and angelic.  
    Everything that I was not. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, darlings. This is my first story with Sarai in it. Her original character was meant to be a vampire, but, well… That didn't exactly happen, did it? Anyway, I hope you enjoyed. I plan to write more Vampire Chronicles at some point.


End file.
